I HAD THE PLEASURE of actually seeing Benjamin Studebaker during an online Platypus panel on the Middle East on July 20. Through our comradely deliberations I discovered we had a lot in common; we both see the kernel of truth in Bismarckianism; Marxists should have no empathy nor patience for city-states’ right to self-determination. From that angle, I can understand his opposition to both Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms, and maybe even towards most postcolonial nationalisms in the region.
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On May 4, 2024, the Platypus Affiliated Society chapters at UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz hosted an introductory workshop on the Philippines and the Left, which included this teach-in by member Daniel Rudin. An edited, revised version follows.
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Presented on October 30, 2024, for the panel discussion “The Left and the 2024 election” with Eddie Liger Smith (American Communist Party) and Jorge Mujica, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society at the University of Chicago.
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IF TODAY’S ATOMIZED Marxist Left agrees on anything, it is the disastrous consequences of the Second International’s failure to mobilize against war in 1914. Instead of banding together against militarism, socialists rushed to defend bourgeois states they had previously pledged to destroy. They all had their reasons.
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The following is a translation, by Lukas Hedderich and Ethan Linehan, of Walter Held’s “Kritische Theorie ohne politische Praxis? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung” (1939).
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